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Will charges to top-10 finish in shortened wet Eurocup race at Monaco

Will Palmer claimed a strong top-10 finish on the streets of Monte Carlo as a wet track made conditions extremely tricky, and resulted in a number of safety car interventions and a shortened Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 race. Having started 12^th, the BRDC SuperStar confounded the usual Monaco logic to make up three places on the road when the race was halted, and was placed 9^th with the result called after seven laps.

On Friday, the Southwater racer had posted the fifth-fastest time in practice but couldn't quite turn that into qualifying pace as a 1m32.346s put him 13^th quickest in an extremely tight session, where Will was just three tenths of a second away from sixth place. After qualifying, the 2015 BRDC F4 Champion was promoted to 12^th owing to Lando Norris having all his times disallowed for a technical infringement.

Early morning rain on Sunday left the challenging street circuit wet for the Eurocup race and the start was delayed due to necessary barrier repairs at Ste Devote following a crash in a previous race. Once the 23-car field was released from the grid, the scheduled 25-minute plus one lap race was started under Safety Car conditions due to the difficult conditions.

After a couple of laps, the Safety Car pulled into the pits and Will immediately set about moving up the field, passing both Fortec Motorsports Bruno Baptista and Josef Kaufmann Racing's Jehan Daruvala, who had come to grief at the chicane. That resulted in the second appearance of the Safety Car to enable the marshals to clear the debris. Once that had taken place, it looked like the race would resume but the MGR Motorsport car of David Porcelli, attempting to catch the back of the pack, lost control heading into Ste Devote and made heavy contact with the barrier. That led to an additional lap under neutral conditions.

With 11 minutes remaining in the race, the Safety Car pulled into the pits and Will was on the charge once more, passing his R-ace GP team-mate Julien Falchero for ninth. As he then began to close on Gabriel Aubry and Harrison Scott ahead, the seventh and eighth placed men tangled into Ste Devote and both went into the barriers. With nowhere to go, Will made contact with Scott and suffered front-wing damage, but was able to continue. However, the red flag came out almost immediately to bring an end to the race, and with the result taken from lap seven, Will finished in ninth position. This also gave Will a rookie podium as he was classified as the third-highest finishing first year driver behind Sacha Fenestraz and Aubry.

Frenchman Fenestraz claimed overall victory ahead of Ferdinand Habsburg and Max Defourny.

The next outing for Will is in the Northern European Cup at the Hungaroring, Hungary on 18/19 June with the next Eurocup race at Monza in Italy on 2/3 July.

Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 - Monaco - Provisional Result

1. Sacha Fenestraz, Tech 1 Racing, 7 Laps
2. Ferdinand Habsburg, Fortec Motorsports, +1.141s
3. Max Defourny, R-ace GP, +1.715s
4. Dorian Boccolacci, Tech 1 Racing, +1.984s
5. Nikita Mazepin, AVF, +2.830s
6. Henrique Chaves, AVF, +3.478s
7. Gabriel Aubry, Tech 1 Racing, +5.107s
8. Harrison Scott, AVF, +4.483s
9. Will Palmer, R-ace GP, +6.178s
10. Julien Falchero, R-ace GP, +6.829s
11. Hugo de Sadeleer, Tech1 Racing, +7.848s
12. Robert Shwartzman, Josef Kaufmann Racing, +8.659s
13. James Allen, JD Motorsport, +9.460s
14. Rodrigo Pflucker, Cram Motorsport, +10.450s
15. Jehan Daruvala, Josef Kaufmann Racing, +10.793s
16. Lando Norris, Josef Kaufmann Racing, +11.222s
17. Petru Florescu, AVF, +14.044s
18. Alexey Korneev, JD Motorsport, +14.613s
19. Vasily Romanov, Fortec Motorsports, +15.441s
20. David Richert, Cram Motorsport, +17.031s
21. Alessandro Perullo, Technorace, +17.465s
DNF. David Porcelli, MGR Motorsport, +2 Laps
DNF. Bruno Baptista, Fortec Motorsports, +4 Laps

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